The Shogun and the Three Thousand Women 1968 aka

Tokugawa onna keizu follows the harem life – one man, and an endless amount of young beautiful women whose only function is to please their lord. It results into 90 minutes of slightly naughty, often silly entertainment. The amount of nudity is generally high – especially in the massive contest scenes such as topples sumo wrestling – but some of the main actresses still remain clothed throughout. Many genre requlars can be spotted in the film – Yukie Kagawa, Yoko Mihara, Naomi Tani (before becoming a Nikkatsu sm queen) and Ishii’s trusted male leads Teruo Yoshida and Asao Koike.
Tokugawa onna keizu marked a turning point on director Teruo Ishii’s career. After having worked for Shin-Toho and Toei for nearly two decades and having recently helmed no less than 10 Abashiri Prison yakuza film instalments, Ishii had started losing his interest for traditional film making. At the same time the audiences were requesting for more daring content and Toei was more than willing offer it. Ishii’s transform into a smut master was however two-part, and and the second half wouldn’t be complited until later the same year with Tokugawa onna keibatsu-shi (The Joy of Torture). Despite the mysterious ’18’ rating Tokugawa onna keizu is a thoroughly unshocking piece of exploitation cinema, not least because of the complete lack any sort of violence, save for one stabbing and some ”forced sexual encounters”. The nudity bank however is exploded all over the harem walls.